Throwing Punches
by HeartEyes4Mariska
Summary: He came in, then hesitated at the end of her kitchen counter. He turned to her. "You uh . . . you never asked me why I hit Blaine." A missing scene from Season Seven's "Fat" Reviews always welcome!


**A/N: Hi again! The song When it Don't Come Easy by Patty Griffin was a huge inspiration while writing this fic. You can listen to it on Spotify, or on Youtube, here - watch?v=ODG2dCwnr00**

 **I like to play around with the Fault/Fat/Web arc by writing missing scenes and alternate endings. Hope you enjoy this one!**

 **Spoilers: Fault/Fat**

 **Rating: M for sexual content**

 **Reviews: Always welcome!**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing, I just like to play with them when I get bored.**

 **Throwing Punches**

Liv had just put her supper dishes in the sink when there was a knock at her apartment door. She furrowed her brow as she scrubbed her palms against the front of her thighs, unsure who it could be.

Her pulse quickened with the glance through the peephole, but she smothered it with a half-hearted smirk as she swung open the door. "El." Her voice was bright. "You didn't lose another shirt fight, did you?"

Elliot couldn't help but chuckle, though something about his expression was still dark. Liv stepped back. "Come in. Is anything wrong?"

He came in, then hesitated at the end of her kitchen counter. He turned to her. "You uh . . . you never asked me why I hit Blaine."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "You said he was a prick. I assumed you two were just butting heads."

"Did Cragen call you?" Elliot sniffed.

Liv sighed and dropped her hands. "And if he did? Let it go, El. He was just trying to keep the peace."

Her partner snorted. "And prove a point."

She came into the kitchen with a roll of her eyes that he managed to catch. "C'mon, El. You're overthinking it. We all need to be reined in once in a while. Like I said - we needed a change." Holding up a wine glass she'd retrieved, she asked, "Drink?"

"Blaine said you left me," he told her flatly, causing the hand holding the glass to freeze. "He said that I . . ." El cleared his throat. "That I screwed you over." Olivia took a deep breath and poured herself a glass of wine, refusing to meet his gaze. "Did I, Liv? Was it it my fault that . . . did I drive you away?"

She set her glass down slowly, licking her lips and swallowing her wine purposefully. "Well. You did say we couldn't be partners anymore." She still would not look up.

"You say that as though I never gave you a choice."

"Wanting me to shoot you - that's what you consider giving me a choice?"

He had come looking for a fight. Olivia knew it, and she knew that he knew it, too. Let him have it out, then - better here, than in the 1-6. Here, at least, nobody would be throwing punches.

"That's the job, Olivia. It's the risk we took with our career. Don't put that on me."

"El . . . "

"No, listen," he snapped, "don't try and blame me for you not wanting to do your job!"

"My job?! Elliot, my job is not getting you killed! Being your partner means I get your ass home at the end of the day - alive!"

"Not every cop goes home alive, Liv! That's just how it is!"

She handed him a glass of wine and lowered her voice again. "Well, lucky then that I'm _your_ partner, and not someone else's."

"Not anymore, you're not," he replied, and had a swallow of his wine. "Remember?"

Meeting his eyes she said stonily, "Couldn't have you looking over your shoulder," and she started for the living room.

"That's not . . ." Elliot bristled, then sighed. "I didn't mean that, and you know it."

"Is that supposed to be an apology?"

"Goddammit, Liv!" he shouted. "A kid is dead! One minute he was right there, just a breath away, and then . . . he killed him. Just a kid!"

Liv ignored the fire of sympathy that the waver in El's voice had ignited and crossed the last line. "Would you feel better right now if it had gone the other way?" She could almost see it as the blood ran to ice in his veins. This was the moment, she supposed, when Blaine had gotten hit. Though she didn't fear him striking her, still she braced for impact.

"Don't you **_DARE_**!" he roared, nearly shaking with the force of it.

But there was no going back, and she refused to flinch. "Well what then?! What outcome was it you were hoping for? Because clearly, watching my back is not a priority anymore."

"I _CHOSE_ YOU!" His shout was punctuated by his hand slamming down on the kitchen counter. "Over my job, Liv. Over my kids . . . over _myself_. Don't dare tell me you're not a priority!"

Having him say it that way - listing her above all else, above what should have been obvious, rocked her in a way that it hadn't previously. She blinked at him for a moment, unsure how to defend herself in the light of the confession she had forced out of him. "I'm not even sure what that _means_ , Liv," his shoulders slumped then, as he struggled to hold onto his anger, "I . . . if I had gone after that kid, and you had needed me . . . I don't - " Olivia watched his face as he trailed off, his eyes glassy with tears.

He had never cried in front of her. Never.

She swallowed, hard. "Elliot . . ." He sniffed angrily and turned away from her, too embarrassed to even fight them while she watched. She got up from the seat she'd taken on the sofa and slowly came back to where he stood. Gingerly, she laid a hand on one of his shoulders. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that you had to make that choice," she whispered.

He shrugged his shoulder out of her touch, but without any real force. "There was no choice to make," he replied. And then, after a pause. "You should have pulled the goddamn trigger, Olivia. God, I'm a mess." He shook his head, still not turning to her.

Trying one more time to offer what comfort she could, she reached out a hand, this time placing it between his shoulder blades, where she could feel the tension all the way to the sinew of him, and the warmth of his anger drawing sweat into his shirt. "Thank you . . . for saving my life," she said softly. Her head was dipped, inches from his back, as she took deep breaths, shaking off the arguing and relaxing as the smell of him surrounded her.

Perhaps the irony of it was that everything else between them had occurred so slowly. There had been years between them, simmering, while his hair and his marriage had grown thin. Years of laughter over drinks, and commiserating when the cases ended more horribly than usual. Years of Stabler telling her that he spent more time with her than with Kathy, and never being entirely sure if he was complaining.

Now, Kathy had been on the sidelines for nearly a year.

It's remarkable how little can change with time - and how much can change in a moment.

Elliot moved under her hand, facing her again, revealing his eyes that were red-rimmed from the effort of holding too many things at bay. They were both out of words, at last, as his lips crashed onto Liv's forcefully. She buckled under the surprise of it, and his hand shot out, curling around the small of her back and pulling her up, into him.

The taste of him, his tongue, the letting go of days worth of cursing and missing him, was more than enough to make her moan. He grunted in response and the sound unlocked a slickness between her legs that made her lightheaded. He clutched her, lifting her up to turn again, and she tumbled onto the kitchen counter while he continued his onslaught of her mouth. His lips and tongue drew a ragged line down her jaw, onto her neck, his breathing rapid.

Remembering the look she had favored him with in the locker room earlier that day, his cock grew somehow harder in his pants. Catching his breath, his hands stilled, one on either side of her neck as he tipped his forehead to hers. "I'll always," he panted, "save your life."

Olivia pulled his mouth back to hers, and the rest of him into the space between her legs on the counter. There were so many places that she wanted his tongue, his body, his hands. She was proud when her shirt was finally off, arching her chest to him, as she had wanted to for almost as long as she could remember.

Elliot's mouth closed around one of her dusky nipples, and she cried out in pleasure, with the realization that she had been wrong - they had been throwing punches here, after all.

Driven by everything - the fear that Gitano had killed her, the fear that he would die himself, the guilt, anger, and sudden separation from her - Elliot was unable to be tender, unable to show the restraint he normally would want. He was fumbling at her pants, lifting her ass and tugging them down even as he pushed desperate kisses against her face, neck and chest.

When they were off, and her legs parted, he spoke again - only her name, on a drawn out, shuddering sigh that added extra syllables, as Elliot slid his fingers into the searing wet between her thighs. Olivia made a noise that a lifetime of being partners in SVU would never have gifted him with, her hips bucking involuntarily, seeking to push his fingers deeper.

Since the moment he'd seen Gitano's knife touch the skin of her throat, having to watch her fall to the station floor, there was a reckoning in Elliot that he needed to drive home. They had both been confronted with the very choice they never wanted to make, and it had thrown off the veil from secret things just as they always knew it would. Now, his hands on her, in her, mapping all the places he had never been but prayed to be, he heard himself making soft murmurs of relief.

Olivia pushed at him, shoving him back from the counter, unbuttoning his shirt, his pants. Neither of them was seeking to take their time, and she only pushed his pants barely below his ass cheeks, frustrated with her need to take him inside herself. "El," she husked, watching his cock spring toward her as she pushed down his underwear. He was thick, uncut and slick to the touch, nearly making her growl. Liv gripped his hips, her hands now inside his unbuttoned shirt, and pulled herself forward to the edge of the counter.

His fingers sunk into the flesh of her ass, lifting her more carefully this time as he brought her down around his waist, her legs wrapping tightly behind him. When his cock plunged into her, stopping only at the hilt, he made an unintelligible, unearthly sound of reverence and satisfaction.

The heat of her, the wet. . . . _Alive_ , he thought, with a sense of relief. Their separation was over. He would fight to make sure it stayed that way for good.

Elliot fucked her hard then, a low grunt escaping his throat each time he pushed home. Olivia's arms were locked around his midsection, her head bowed toward his shoulder, replying with a breathy, "Unh, unh," to his grunts. There was something calming, for both of them, in the primal-ness of it, in the quiet, the slap of bodies.

They didn't speak again until it was nearly finished - he pushed her hips still on the counter, watching himself slow down and sink into her purposefully. El met her eyes with a look as he caught her lips in a soft kiss, then a nip. "I'm gonna . . . " he murmured, a warning.

"Yes," she replied, her chin dipping in a consenting nod. Elliot closed his eyes and let his hands slide from her hips to the curve of her shoulder blades and sank into her, shuddering as he held still, emptying into her with a gasp. The feel of him, swelling and throbbing and filling her succeeded in finishing her off.

Liv tugged his head to the curve of her shoulder and shivered as she clenched him, biting out his name on a shout.

When long moments had passed, and Elliot was certain that he had to move before his legs went out from under him, something Cragen had mentioned that day came back to him. "How _is_ it that you put up with me, anyway?" he panted.

She laughed, a deep, authentic laugh. "Well," she smirked, "you do have some positive qualities," and punctuated 'some' with a palm slid low, brushing between his legs.

Elliot chuffed out a short laugh, leaning his head in to plant a soft kiss on the side of Liv's neck, and then he stepped back, stretching his legs until his knees popped, trying to straighten his clothes. When he looked up again, he caught her gazing at him - with a look so similar to the one she'd given him in the locker room of the precinct

( _I like that shirt_ )

that it made him catch his breath. Her eyes raked and lingered, the fire in them still not completely out. Considering his age and the number of years he'd spent in a tepid marriage, Elliot had nothing to apologize for; the job and time spent burning out his temper in the gym had kept him fitter than almost any other cop his age, but something about it being Olivia, with no reason anymore to hide or cut short her staring, made him bashful. She smirked when she noticed him never meeting her eyes.

"El," she said warmly. Slowly, he looked at her, letting his gaze sweep down from her face to her chest, peppered with the marks of his kisses and teeth, to the patch of dark hair between her legs, and back up again.

"Liv?"

"Take me to bed," she said simply, and held out a hand to be helped off the counter.

So then, he was tender, and then he was restrained. They invited each other into all of the shadows of themselves, those places that seven years of partnership had layered with limits and constraints. He chased the bite of his teeth over her skin with the slickness of his tongue, and chased his fears that he had lost her out of his head.

"Elliot," Liv mulled his name, invoked it, tasting all the ways she had never said it before. She considered the weight of him over her, the spark of his skin on hers. She parted her thighs, forgetting how scared she was that he would regret it all come morning, and let his name catch fire from her throat on a wail when his mouth found her clit.

She found herself, open-mouthed over the wet, thick throb of him, when she lifted her head and fixed him with a sobering look. "I thought he would kill you," she confessed - a thought she only now felt brave enough to vocalize, holding the evidence of his life in her hand.

"Olivia." His voice was both grit and balm, replete with the confession he couldn't quite say that morning: "I love you."

And then all confessions were lost in the closing of distances between them, in the close of her mouth over his cock, and their fingers twining in the dark. It was anyone's guess where they would find themselves in the morning, and the days to follow - the certainty was that they were done throwing punches now, and all was truce as they made love and fell asleep in each others' arms.


End file.
